This invention relates to a battery backup system having a plurality of battery cells arranged in parallel strings of serially connected battery cells and, more particularly, to a method for determining the internal impedance of each individual battery cell without disconnecting the battery cells from the system.
Large battery systems are commonly used to provide backup power in case there is a failure of the commercial power grid. Typically, such a backup system includes a single string, or a plurality of parallel strings, of serially connected rechargeable battery cells and a charger connected to the commercial power grid for maintaining the charge on the battery cells. An inverter is coupled between the strings of battery cells and the load, which inverter is enabled upon the detection of a failure of the commercial power grid. In some applications, the inverter may be continuously operational to power the load with energy from the charger during the time that commercial power is available. Many of these battery backup systems, called “uninterruptible power supplies” (UPS), are configured such that the load is never aware of any failure of the commercial power grid because the battery system immediately supplies the necessary energy upon detecting a failure of the commercial power grid.
A typical installation of such an uninterruptible power supply is between the commercial power grid and a large computer system used by financial, communications, manufacturing and other commercial industries. If the battery system is taken “off-line” for any reason, the necessary protection against a power outage is lost for the time that the battery system is not connected plus the time for recharging, if a significant amount of charge has been removed during the off-line period of time. However, such battery backup systems must be monitored on a regular basis to insure that protection from commercial power grid failure is always available. Therefore, systems have been developed to perform such monitoring while the battery backup system remains on-line.
Impedance measurement is a method by which the condition of a battery cell may be assessed without taking the battery system off-line. Impedance measurements typically impose a current (hereinafter called the “loading current”) on the battery cell to be evaluated and measure the resulting voltage. Various commercially available test instruments function this way. Using Kelvin connections, these instruments impose a current on just the battery cell to be measured. After a measurement has been made, the operator moves the Kelvin clips to the next battery cell, reads the value, moves the clips again, and continues in this manner until all the battery cells have been measured. Therefore, the loading current flows almost entirely through the battery cell being measured, it being thought that the parallel paths (if they exist) are generally of so much higher impedance that any loading current flowing through them is of little or no consequence. However, the drawn current comes from not only the battery cell under test, but also from the Thevenin equivalent voltage source of the rest of the system. Therefore, to obtain consistently accurate results, an impedance multiplier term has to be calculated and used. In the past, one method used a current clamp or voltmeter with shunt to separately measure the string current. To avoid the expense of a current clamp, some battery cell impedance measurement systems simply ignore the impedance multiplier term. This results in a measurement that deviates from the true internal impedance just because the battery cell is in a string. The true impedance with this technique can then only be measured with the battery cell separated from the string. Another type of system lets the, operator enter an impedance multiplier term, leading to guesswork by the operator.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to use an accurate impedance multiplier term in a battery cell impedance measurement system without requiring the expense of a current clamp.